Revision as of 13:50, 24 March 2013

Open Media Player (referred to as OMP from now on) is an effort to recreate (closed source) stock Media Player (referred to as MP, from now on) for Maemo platform, as Open Software. The main goal of the project is to include all features of MP without it's bugs, at the same time having the ability to extend functionality, when desired and appropriate.

OMP is currently in beta stage, so it may not be ready for end-users. However, brave souls (power-users, testers, developers) are encouraged to test it and participate in the development, by either submitting patches, or pointing out bugs/proposed features. OMP is on it's way to be included in the testing branch of CSSU.

Features

OMP extra features (not found in MP)

The name speaks for itself: turn the device to rotate the interface. Automatic orientation can be disabled in the settings menu.

Entertainment View

An alternate view where elements from the regular "Now Playing" view are animated.

Car View

A finger-friendly view for use when driving. Tap the center of the screen to show the clock and swipe from right to left to show the playlist.

Lyrics

When enabled (in the general settings), OMP will download lyrics for the current song and cache them for offline use. Lyrics are provided by plugins and more than one of them can be enabled at the same time. If multiple plugins are active, the first one in the list will try to fetch lyrics, if it fails then the second, and so on. Tap the cover art to toggle between the usual progress bar/playlist and the lyrics display. It's possible to add missing lyrics and modify existing with the built-in editor, which can be invoked from lyrics' context menu.

Before the update of 3th Aug 2012, lyrics were stored in "/home/user/.lyrics/". They cannot be simply moved to the new location, because the naming convention has changed, but that doesn't make them completely useless. OMP has a plugin called OMP pre-20120803 offline cache, which will search for lyrics also in the old directory (and save them in the new), so don't forget to turn it on if you don't want to start afresh.

To manually insert lyrics into the cache, put them in "/home/user/.cache/openmediaplayer/lyrics/Artist's Name/Title of the Song.txt" (note case sensitivity).

Easy way to share files

Simply invoke the context menu of a song and select Share to send it via either Bluetooth or email. Works for videos, too.

Configurable size of automatic playlists

The number of songs can be changed in the general settings. If set to a large number, it works like sorting the whole library by popularity, last time played or from recently added to old.

Playlist editing

It appears in two places: "Now playing" and the playlist browser. To move an item, double-tap it, but, hold after the second touch (so it's more like one and a half tap) and drag it to the desired position.

Easier playlist creation

In many places you will find an option called Add to a playlist, which allows you to append songs to an arbitrary playlist. It's also useful for cloning and combining playlists.

Creating playlists from a folder

To use this feature, check Open whole folders in the general settings. When enabled, opening a song with a file browser (like the stock one or FileBox) will not only play that song, but also enqueue other songs from the same directory.

Restoring the music playlist

It is easily possible to return to the music playlist after watching a movie or listening to radio. It can be accomplished by long-pressing the playback indicator in the bottom right corner of the screen and selecting Music from the context menu.

Improved album art

The first thing you will notice is probably the reflected cover, but what is more important, OMP will detect files named "front.jpg" and "folder.jpg" (in addition to standard "cover.jpg"). Moreover, it is possible to choose any other file, using "Select album art" from cover's context menu.

Reverse time

This is hard to notice, because the only way to turn it on is to click a label which shows playback progress (on the left of a progress bar). When enabled, time is counted from the end of a track, instead of from the beginning. Works both for movies and songs.

Headset button

Open Media Player has support for "phone" button on wired jack headset. In configuration dialog it is possible to select an action to be performed when the button is pressed. This feature does not even require any additional applications/packages (like headset-button-enabler or headset-control).

Searching without sliding out the keyboard

You can open the search box by sliding your finger up from the very bottom of the screen. When it pops out, do what you would do with any other text field (click on it to show the on-screen keyboard). Very useful for portrait mode or if you're too lazy to use the physical keyboard.

Customizable action on exit

Closing MP usually results in stopping the music. However, in OMP it's also possible to pause the music or even keep it going with the player closed. Configurable in the settings window.

Sleep timer

The sleep timer makes it possible to automatically pause/stop playback or close the application (with respect to the closing action selected in the main settings) after a selected number of minutes. Moreover, it supports two variants of volume reduction: linear, which decreases the volume level in equal intervals and exponential, which starts gently, but speeds up as approaches the timeout. Volume level can be changed freely when the sleep timer is in effect ‌– reduction rate will be adjusted to keep the chosen characteristic and reach 0 at the end (but in reality the sound already goes mute at ~4%). Available from the main window's menu.

MP features, currently lacking in OMP

Counting duration of playlists in the playlist browser.

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Known bugs:

Headset button action does not work properly if Prevent playback interruptions is enabled.

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Planned extra features (not present in MP)

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Configuration

General settings

The settings window is accessible from the titlebar menu of the main view. Some of the options might look mysterious (there's not enough space for more elaborate names) and this is why their meanings are explained here.

Continuous video playback

When a movie ends in MP, playback stops and the video window is closed. This is also the default behavior of OMP, but checking this option allows the next video in the playlist to be started automatically. Items in the playlist are ordered in the same way as they were displayed in the window from which the video was selected for playing.

Open whole folders

Controls the behavior when another program (like a file browser) tells OMP to open a song. When this option is disabled, only the selected song is opened. When enabled, also other songs from the same directory are added to the playlist. In other words, a playlist for the whole folder is created. This works non-recursively, i.e. subdirectories are not included.

Append opened songs

Another option related to cooperation with other applications. By default, when the player is ordered to open a song, current tracks are cleared and the song is added to a fresh playlist. Enabling this options skips the clearing procedure, so the selected song is added to the end of the playlist, leaving other tracks intact. Works together with Open whole folders.

Prevent playback interruptions

In older versions of OMP each time an SMS or an IM arrived, the music was abruptly silenced, the notification sound was played and then the volume for music was restored. It makes the events harder to miss, but at a cost of unpleasant gaps in the music. This options allows you to choose between the described behavior and uninterrupted music with a quiet beep each time something happens.

Lazy sliders

With eager sliders, song/movie progress is adjusted immediately to the slider position. With the lazy option, playback position is changed after releasing the slider. The latter is smoother, but does not provide immediate preview.

"Delete" for playlist items

Turning this option on extends context menus of song lists in the playlist browser and Now playing by adding an action called Delete. It provides a way to permanently delete a song (so the file is removed from the device), next to the soft Delete from playlist/now playing.

Override FMTX checks in UI

Standard FM transmitter daemon does not allow transmitting with headphones or a USB cable plugged in, but this is not the case with jacekowski's modified FMTXD. If you have it installed, enabling this options skips the checking procedure, so nothing stands in the way to turn the transmitter on.

Force language code

If for some reason you don't want to use the automatically loaded translation, you can force a language by putting a language code in the input box. To auto-detect your language, just leave the box empty. For a list of available translations and their language codes visit http://www.transifex.net/projects/p/gidzzz-qt-mediaplayer/ (only mostly complete translations are packaged with OMP). Effects of this option are visible only after restarting the application.